“This solution helps close the gap for potential and promising, but unfunded projects.” – Bill Gates

Name: Cindy Wu & Denny Luan

Location: New York City

Specialty: Co-Founders of Experiment

How do you feel about funding scientific research, particularly medical research? How efficient, effective and fair is the grant system in deploying billions of taxpayer dollars? Are funds targeted towards diseases proportional to their occurrence in patient populations? Are the influences of disease specific non-profit groups helpful or hurtful? Are the interests and activities of biomedical companies aligned with the needs of you, and your patients?

Well, if you think there’s room for some serious improvement, today’s episode is for you.

Location: George Washington University School of Nursing. Washington, DC

Specialty: Professor of Nursing and Health Services Researcher

Today we’re exploring the future of PA’s and NP’s. Many of you listening work very closely with them, and in-fact many of you listening are PA’s and NP’s. As the roles, responsibilities and autonomy of PA’s and NP’s continue to grow, an interesting question comes up. Can we actually compare the effectiveness of PA’s and NP’s to doctors?

All right, welcome back. Imagine a world where patients can access their medical records anytime, anywhere with immutable security. Imagine every instance along a patient’s continuum of care recorded and easily searchable. Imagine the opportunity to meta search millions of health records and data points, and even outcomes, without compromising an individual patient’s personal identity. Imagine patients using these resources to evaluate and choose their hospitals, and even you.

Folks, this isn’t science fiction or wishful thinking. It’s a technology called block-chain and if you’ve heard of bitcoin, you’ve heard of block-chain.

“Although scientific training can inoculate against the power of nutritional myths, by no means does it guarantee immunity.”

-Alan Levinovitz, “The Gluten Lie”

All right, welcome back. Do a quick search on Amazon for books about gluten and over three thousand results show up. Everything from cooks books, diet guides and even childrens’ books show up. If you’re a listener to this podcast, and you don’t have celiac disease, these are not the books likely found in your home library.

Happily there’s one book, on the first page of results, that you should own though. Called “The Gluten Lie”, it’s well researched, backed up with peer-reviewed data and it’s about much more than just Glutten. Who wrote this book you ask? An MD out there who was fed up with latest irrational diet craze. No, this book was written by our guest today, Alan Levinovitz, a professor of Religion and Philosophy at James Madison University. As we’ll soon explore with Alan, many of these diet crazes, pseudo science myths and other crazy beliefs are nothing new. They’ve popped up again and again throughout history, and if we don’t learn from history, well, you can guess what happens.

This was a unique conversation and probably one of the funnest yet. Alan is fighting the good fight, writing for The Atlantic, Time, Fortune and NPR just to name a few. He’s also a great guy to talk with and the kind of professor you wish you had had in college. With that said, let’s get started….

Dr. Gavin Francis is a general practitioner based in Edinburgh Scotland. He’s also a prolific traveler and an incredibly talented writer.

Today we’re going the explore the 15 months Gavin served as the sole physician at Halley, the British research station in Antarctica. Gavin was it. With no medical team, no back up and pretty limited equipment, Gavin had to be ready for any medical emergency, large or small. During the winter months, Halley is completely cut off from the rest of the world. Ships can’t enter, planes can’t land and you won’t see the sun until spring. It’s hard to imagine being farther off the grid than this. Even the international space station has a Soyuz spacecraft ready for an emergency escape.

Norman Beck has been profiled in the New Yorker, he’s shared his story on the stage of TED, he has breakfast with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates every year, and yet, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of him…until today.

Norman Beck searches for data in hard to reach places. Because he looks where no one else looks, he knows what no one else knows. Norman’s experience and skills were put to the test one day in a doctors office, when he found himself on the receiving end of a life threatening diagnosis. He knew his life depended on the answer to a very serious question: “who is the best surgeon I can find?”

Today we’re going to take a brief departure from our normal routine for a smaller, mini episode. In just one week, the moon’s shadow will be passing over the continental US . If you’ve never seen a solar eclipse, and you’re still not sure if it’s worth all the hype, stay tuned. Our guest, Dr. Gordon Telepun is a plastic surgeon in Decatur Alabama. That’s his day job. Gordon is also a passionate amateur astronomer. He’s traveled to the middle of the ocean, and as far as the plains of southern Africa to see a solar eclipse. His knowledge of eclipses would probably give Neil deGrasse Tyson a run for his money. Gordon has even developed a geo-location app (for viewing the eclipse) that’s being used by NASA next week at two of their observation sites. This episode was fascinating and lot of fun. With that said, let’s get started…